


But It's Nothing To Cry About

by JDylah_da_Kylah



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fear, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, Illustrated (soon), Implied/Referenced Suicide, Making Love, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route - "I want to stay with you.", Regret, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 00:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10560390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JDylah_da_Kylah/pseuds/JDylah_da_Kylah
Summary: Toriel knows why Sans has a tendency to revisit the mountain. But why andwhyare two very different things, and a harsh night of her own leaves her with a sudden stroke of understanding—one she doesn't dare to face alone.Or: "If there's no one beside you when your SOUL embarks . . ."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TopazShadowwolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopazShadowwolf/gifts).



> "No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white:  
> Just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark.
> 
> . . . And the soles of your shoes  
> Are all worn down:  
> The time for sleep is now.  
> But it's nothing to cry about,  
> 'Cause we'll hold each other soon, in the blackest of rooms.
> 
> If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied,  
> And illuminate the _No_ 's on their vacancy signs . . .  
> If there's no one beside you when your SOUL embarks,  
> Then I'll follow you into the dark.
> 
> I'll follow you into the dark."  
> (Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark"—to this day, all these years since I first heard it, this is one of the most poignant love songs I know.)
> 
> Thoughts/reviews/comments'n'critiques are always welcome. I do hope you enjoy. <3

"Dear one?"

Sans shifts in the semi-darkness, startled that the moon isn't the brightest source of light, nor even the indigo trails licking from her claws as she strokes his hand, up and along the metacarpals and phalanges, down again, smoothing the pebbles of his wrist. No—it's the flickered flaring of her SOUL, a sorrowful-spilled thing, much as he knows she must perceive him when his mind is tangled up in knots, in the timelines, in all that's been and what could be.

Shaking himself from sleep, he rolls his wrist and lets her claws rest there in something like the valley of his palm.

"tori?"

Her own SOUL-light scatters the fur of her body and the tears on her cheeks as slivers and crystalline shards; for a moment he's frustrated that she's kept something that's been gnawing at her from him for an entire afternoon—until he remembers, and guiltily at that, that it's a trick he knows too well.

Still—

He's startled into silence when she abruptly asks, "Even now, after all these months, you, on the worst of nights, still climb the mountain."

He doesn't answer, lets a pearlescent phalange find her cheek, stroke away a tear tracing a sluggish path thereof . . . Until she shifts, ancient eyes beneath thick lashes finding his, boring into his own eyesockets, not so much snuffing out as clutching at the lightpoints in the depths of them . . . Again her SOUL flashes and instinctively he reaches for it, reaches with a tender kind of haste, all cyan light, all soft-edged, gentle, wordless whispering.

_tori, it's okay. whatever it is. it's okay . . ._

"Where is it that you go?"

"tori. hey . . ."

The Boss Monster shakes her head, offering a wan smile, the gleaming of her fangs and little more—a faux smile at best, at worst a ruse that could cut the both of them to the quick. "No reason, dear one. I am simply curious."

"we both know that isn't true."

She sighs, a shuddering, a prelude perhaps to something else—he wonders now at how few times she's cried—granting that not everyone finds a good, solid cry cathartic, it's always seemed to him that many times she's longed for it and simply hasn't let herself—

But she merely shifts, resting her muzzle there against his skull, the soft fur of her shoulder shadowing even the brightest light. When she speaks again, it's not really through the words whispered, slipped twixt teeth and tongue, but through her SOUL he understands.

"You do not go because you wish to . . . disappear . . ."

_And yet it is there you go when you are in the deepest pain . . . is it not?_

Unspoken—not even in his SOUL can he bring himself to offer her the question, the affirmation—obvious suffering needs neither thing—

Restively her paws caress him, coaxing him to kick back the covers, then to find his feet. It's chilly out, if not winter now; he dons his slippers and old coat; she reaches for a sweater, pulls it on over her nightgown, needs no more than that. Again their eyes meet, the lights of his caught in the pallor of the moonlight, the depths of hers gleaming by the glow of both.

_Then take me there._

* * *

"down there, huh?"

"Do _you_ come merely to stare into the abyss, dear one?"

Sans offers a dry chuckle, dryer than the winter-deadened limbs of trees and the last remnants of leaf sloughs lying there along the trail in moldered heaps. "'if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.'"

The wind sighs, whips at their coats, tousling the fluffy lining of his hood and her long-furred ears. Just at their feet yawns the chasm—so it was once said that there were no exits or entrances into the Underground, excepting the Barrier of course, but as Toriel's known for all these years, there's been one entrance too many—one entrance at all.

"Did not the same Human remark about fighting Monsters?"

"heh. don't think he meant _us_."

Silence, then; even the wind then dies; he shuffles his own feet, hears the scuffing of her claws in the spring-softened earth, the catching of them on small stones. He wonders what it is to her to be back here—if not where Chara originally fell, then where Frisk had brought themself to—

"Take me where you go."

* * *

Once—really, not so long ago—he'd have asked her why. But now, without a word, he merely nods, and again into the darkness whisks them.

* * *

_The Judgement Hall?_

She's never, in all her years, given much thought to where the strange golden effervescence came from, but now the corridor is dark and hollow and that darkness makes her wonder. The silhouetted pillars are like great branchless, lifeless trees, great sentinels, sole witnesses to what has happened here, time and time again, innumerable iterations, repetitions . . . The Delta Rune framed in each stained-window-glass seems somehow sinister, and said windows flare back, with a decidedly sharp edge, the indigo brilliance licking from her claws—it was far too deep a darkness for no light at all, though he'd made no move at first to cast a cyan thread himself.

Perhaps—and the thought causes her to shiver—perhaps he knows the hall too well.

"well," he speaks up finally, "i wander more places than this. but always here—it always starts with here."

"Why here, dear one?"

"H e r e ' s  w h e r e  i t  e n d s,  T o r i."

And that's not necessarily the truth, but there are far too many nuances for him to explain them all . . . Perhaps she can gather some of them, knowing what she knows, what he's told her, and all that's come to pass here on the Surface, between themselves and the child, between Frisk and—

Here's where, once, far more than once, he's managed to turn _them_ back.

Chara. Frisk's body, with Chara in the eyes . . .

And then Frisk has RESET, and the world's begun anew.

Or else—

Here's where—

Toriel trembles, twists her paw, lets the flames leap until their shadows dance.

* * *

And wordlessly they move on, through a microcosmic world once brimming with life, grown abysmally and eerily still. She hates the stillness, as they trace the steps she took so, so long ago, bearing Chara's body for its final, proper burial—down through the castle's labyrinth, the old house which she hurries through because . . . it is far too sharp a thing . . . and then the CORE, and Hotland (which, beneath Mettaton's influence, has changed so much since she saw it last . . . ). She hates the stillness but is far more startled yet to see a veil of peace dropped across Sans' face. His gait is slow, as if he savors the echo of their steps: the whole world, once it was, the whole world between them.

"Does this not . . ." She fishes for the words as they traverse the lantern rooms of Waterfall, doesn't find the right ones, lets the question hang unasked, knowing that he senses it. The stale-stagnant water whispers, softly, an alkaline song; if she were to listen to the Echo Flowers, she wonders what they'd say.

"no."

A word, no more; his hand in hers, no more; she cannot even feel the steadfast presence of his SOUL, as if there's something he's keeping cloistered from her—some little hidden truth he doesn't dare to share. And well enough that is—she hasn't yet explained why she's asked to come here—although she wonders if their reasons are congruent.

* * *

He pauses for a moment near the trash heaps and the waterfall which earns this marsh its name. It's his secret, his and Alphys', that more than once, in several timelines, oh, he'd met her here, following some single-worded text she'd sent—day or night, it didn't matter. They'd stood and stared into the darkness, idly tossed out quantum theories, knew deep within their SOULs that it wasn't for such speculation that they came. But each time he'd come, and each time he'd SAVED a life.

But . . . sometimes . . . when everyone . . . when brother and friend-and-would-be-lover both were gone . . . or when it was just Alphys who was left . . . Alphys, who in the wake of greatest tragedy at last realized her own strength . . . the fates were turned.

More than once, she'd SAVED him, too.

* * *

Toriel stares up, up along the rushing torrent, pouring down the rocks, casting boulders to the depths as if they were pebbles. Sans' hand tightens around her own; his smile waxes grim; she notices that his gaze does not follow her own but trails downwards, downwards into an abyss far deeper than . . .

"the riverperson ran a ferry. not sure where they went after . . ."

"Hm. They took one from Waterfall to Snowdin, did they not?"

"and hotland, yeah. a big ol' loop . . . welp . . ." Sans stifles a yawn. "wouldn't have said no to that right now."

"Would you care to rest, dear one?"

A shrug and thread of hollow laughter. "nah."

* * *

Through the darkness, through the darkness and then, to Toriel's surprise, straight into the muted glare of haze on snow, the sharp cold scent of wind and the soughing of the pines. Something catches in Sans' SOUL, as one might catch their breath; hastily she turns, only to find that he's swaying where he stands, his hands (cyan sparking through the latticework of bones) outheld; for a moment, shocked, she watches, watches as he stumbles and drops to his knees, burying phalanges in the snow that can't quite snuff out the light—

 _Loss_ ragefeargrief—

The manifestation of the darkness pouring from his SOUL—

Her own SOUL pounds out a steady fear, no matter how many a time she's seen him thus—but for that, at least, she knows how to reach for him—her own broad paws outheld, steady, steadiness to counteract his shivering, with such violence is he shaking now—she reaches for him with her SOUL, all waves of indigo, deep-light, heart-light, love-light—whispering not so much his name as that essence of him, deeper still than names—

"T o r i e l  . . .  t e l l  m e  . . ."

His eyesockets are closed (that endearing incongruity), the whole of him hunched over, shudder-wracked, guilt-and-grief-torn . . . and it _does_ seem to tear at him . . . she's felt the cracking of his SOUL before and this—

She realizes that this—he has always faced this moment alone. In the timelines, yes, and whenever he's come here, and certainly in dreams . . .

She thinks then, too, of the entry she once wrote in an ancient diary—ages ago, it seems—when her strange new friend outside the door was there for her in her grief at a child's leave-taking—

_This is where he—when—_

"There is no dust here, mixed in with the snow, dear one. Your brother is safe. Your brother is loved, and safe, and whole. He is asleep with Frisk and Asriel, dear one, on the Surface, safe in bed."

He continues clutching at the snow; Toriel wonders briefly if he can't tell that it's _just_ that—just snow—no matter what she's said.

"i can't—lady, i'm sorry, but i can't—"

"Dear one—Sans, my dear one, come now . . . come away from here . . ."

He's deadweight in her arms as she stands and gathers him against her; he doesn't have the strength nor will to stand, and she doesn't blame him; far better that she's here to bear him than to think of him alone.

* * *

Few times has Tori run.

When Asgore fell, the poison of the buttercup-thick pie coursing through his body.

When Asriel carried Chara, semi-conscious, to her, tear-cheeked, whimpering, saying again and again that it had been an accident: when she'd run for the doctor, who knew so much about Humans but couldn't save the child—the fallen one who'd _wanted_ to die.

When her son, trapped in a grotesque and obscene form, had shambled home, still bearing _them_ , their empty body, wrestling within himself for their SOUL as well as his. What had he wanted then but peace for the both of them?

And when—

* * *

Her feet carry her easily enough through snowdrifts, along the shadowed tracks of paths unused these many months, now mostly buried; sticks snap beneath her claws and the breath bites against her lungs; the threading of her SOUL is quick, but nothing to the scree of his.

Finally, though, finally they're through the forest; only when they've reached the door, still left ajar, does she dare to stop, to reach for him again, lilting his chin upwards with a gentle hand, coaxing him to really _look_ , to see not the twisted nightmares but the world she knows, the world they share.

Reminiscent of their Frisk, he squirms within her grasp—were it not for the situation's gravity, she'd have found herself laughing—and welcomed it: the reverberations of her deep howling basso bounding through the cavern and the forest and the catacombs. Tenderly as any child, perhaps even more gently than that, she sets him on his feet, watches with fond eyes as he raises shaking knuckles, tapping out an old, old familiar five-four time. The echoes of it carry, calling him, calling him as she subtly calls out to him: come back, come back . . .

When he turns to her after a moment, the lightpoints in his eyes are bright, though for once he has no apology to give, nor could she ever ask it of him: she understands too well.

"i come here last," he says, holding out a hand. "whenever things are bad. heh. if the hall's where it all ended, here's where it began."

"Why come to the Underground at all?"

A harsh wind snaps, blows her long ears back from her cheeks, tangles there the fur and leaves tears brimming in her eyes.

Sans shakes his head, holds out a hand; together, then, they cross over the threshold, stepping into the shadow of the RUINS, out of the biting cold.

* * *

The house, as much of the Underground, is cast to semi-darkness, now that there's no generator running. But still it carries an echoed memory of soft phosphorescent light; they feel their way along the halls, Sans letting Tori lead: past the empty fire grate and into the kitchen, which still bears, somehow, the scent of butterscotch-cinnamon pie. Reflexively he peeks into the fridge, finds a bar of chocolate, suppresses a shudder and a wave of sorrow: well enough he now knows who it was for, whose memory she kept alive throughout the centuries . . . was it desolate hope or sheer delusion . . . ?

_and all chara said was that they didn't want to be forgotten._

_all frisk's said is that we need to remember them for who they really were._

_well._

_kid._

_someone really cared about you._

* * *

"You want to ask me the same question, do you not?"

Tori's voice is low; she stands near the sink, ill-at-ease, running her great paws over the countertop—again, again—and Sans realizes that many a time she must have let a pie cool there.

"What happened today is not . . . it was from sheer ignorance, I think." She shakes her head, glances towards him, looks away: both of them know how brutal a weapon ignorance can be, how easily it can be honed into something much worse, like bigotry. "When I went to get our Frisk from school, they seemed upset, and another child's mother confronted me about the lunches I make them: they seemed especially upset about the pie. Even the other parents seemed uncomfortable—not because of that, but for my sake . . ."

The great Boss Monster draws a breath.

"Frisk and I have talked. _That_ issue is not important; Frisk assured me that I don't need to change what food I pack them, and that they'd have it no other way, and that other children's comments or what their parents say should not trouble me so much.

"But."

Sans is beginning to piece together the picture.

"it's the fact that some human mother called into question your ability to love frisk and care for them . . ."

"As if what I am doing is making them . . . ill, somehow. Or that there is something I am doing wrong, something I do not know, something only Humans would know about their own which might—which might somehow save their life?"

"eh. tori." Sans shakes his head. "if frisk says you're doing a good job, if they seem happy and content and well, then to hell with what anyone else says, huh?"

"Yes. But."

A duck of her head, a shadow fallen across her face, cast by an unseen form.

"it reminded you of . . . chara."

"And the fact that we almost lost our child, Sans. All for everything I did not know. If it weren't for _you_ —"

"hey. easy, tori . . . hey, don't think about that, huh?"

His mind throws him some shade-dark memory, a thing he isn't sure was real; whatever it might have been, whenever it was, conceptually it's far better a thing than the two of them cramped into the tiny kitchen, Toriel herself reminded here of little more than acts of love and kindness which someone's dared to slight, and by so doing, judged her.

What do Humans know of judgement?

Tenderly cyan light finds her, stirs her, wraps itself around her as surely as those bony, coat-clad arms wrap around her waist; eyes still blurred with tears which she's refused to shed, the sum of centuries of memories, of nightmares, she allows him gently to lead her from the kitchen, through the living room, and down, down the hallway—past the first room, given to each fallen one in turn—

Her paw glances out, finds the doorknob, lets the latch click, lets Sans cross the threshold first.

The room hardly seems her own, though hers it was for so, so long. Indigo flares dully, catches in the corners, though so familiar is it all, unchanged, that she hardly needs the light.

Nor, to her utmost shock, does he.

She hears the snaring rasp of bone on reclaimed wood as he makes his way past her desk, phalanges playing there across the chair-back-spokes. The only thing she took from this room was the diary, no more: she had no wish for robes with the Delta Rune, nor any of the books she's read far too many times for any one Monster's number of days, nor anything even from the children's room . . .

It's her paws which first catch against the foot of the bedframe; wearily she sits, feels him haul his bones to sit beside her.

"I am tired," she murmurs finally, gaze cast once around the room, just once, eyeing the specters warily, wondering if he sees them, too. "Dear one, I am tired. The world seems at times so vast, so unknowable, such a . . . labyrinth . . . I'll never know."

"yeah. i can appreciate that, tori."

They sit again in silence, Sans having taken her paw in both his hands, running delicate phalanges there across her knuckles and metacarpals there beneath the fur and flesh. What all these hands have done—

"if you don't like being here, tori, we can leave."

"Oh, no." She shifts, a subtle thing, draws her knees up to her chest and leans back into the pillows, eyes rolled towards him, mere slivers reflecting the subtler plays of light, such that they are. Scarcely does she realize that it's cyan light, a gift. "No. To be here with you makes this place much different."

"heh. uh. same."

Toriel is still for a while, half-slipped into sleep, memories running through her mind, one blurred into another, water through a sieve. "You do not think that I am a bad mother?"

—A question she's asked many times over the months, but nonetheless still sharp. Gently he reminds her, of the many things there are, that Frisk had climbed the mountain for an ending—Frisk had nearly let Flowey destroy them—but then she'd come, she'd come and rescued them, and if that weren't enough (angry they might have been)—instead she'd imparted unto them a will to live—a hope—despite all of the uncertainty, a hope.

Hadn't that been so?

"don't ever forget that, tori. don't let anyone take that away from you."

* * *

Soon enough, wearied from the run through Snowdin, from skipping through the darkness, the both of them slip into sleep: only then does Sans remember where this memory came from, and how different it was . . . when, from sheer weariness, he'd crawled into her bed, alone, alone but for their voices in his head . . . His SOUL twists, misery and terror flaring bright, ironic that such darkness becomes _light_ —

But when he jolts awake, _she's_ holding him—really holding him—no mere figment or disembodied, dust-cast echo—but her soft, soft arms around him and the forgiving gentleness of her and all the _power_ of a Boss Monster cast as shades the same. She smells sweet, and of cinnamon; before, before, in whatever time it was, the bed had been empty, the air was thick, the air was choked with death.

And so he clings to her, letting her indigo brilliance seep through him, warming him, soothing him; in her he can still feel the guilt and terror all her own, but far greater than those is the determination still to drive them back. Tenderly she pulls him from his coat, shuffles from her sweater, lets them each be reminded of each other's closeness, tangible and real, the magic of their bodies an inflection, affirmation, the call-cries of their SOULs the strongest medicine of all.

* * *

They wake, eventually, dress, and step through the darkness, homeward-bound, leaving in the shadows of the RUINS and the home and all the Underground just that: shadows their own, that have no place in the light.

**Author's Note:**

> So it's not strictly fluff, but I _promised_ fluff, and . . . well. I tried. I'm sorry, Topaz-friend: I meant it to be fluffier, but . . . well. I hope the end, at least, makes up for it (and I hope you don't mind what I did!).
> 
> (Actually, after [_False Hope_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10380954/chapters/22926225) I _needed_ fluff . . . Seriously, though, go check that out and give the wonderful TopazShadowwolf some love. My heart. The feels. All the feels.)
> 
> Also, due credit: the reference to Sans and Alphys going to the waterfall and what happens there was inspired by [Undertale Anniversary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQRboZwDrOI) by iscoppie. Admittedly it's Alphys and Undyne in iscoppie's animation, but since I envision Sans and Alphys as being hard-and-fast besties, I couldn't resist playing with the thought of a situation like that one. Sure, I think they met when working with Dr. Gaster, but after all that . . . not only prior to when Alphys meets Undyne, but also in the timelines when Sans is essentially alone, to a greater or lesser degree . . . when we know Alphys was struggling already with suicidal thoughts . . . and the Neutral ending where it's basically just Sans and Al still left alive? (When you abort the Genocide route at the last possible chance, before killing the last Monster in Hotland, but proceed to kill Mettaton, Asgore and Flowey . . . ? Alphys' phone call after all that is heartwrenching.) _Anyway_ , between Alphys' canonical struggles and the toll the timelines and everything would take on Sans, thanks to iscoppie's animation I began to conceive of Al and Sans as talking each other down from the waterfall, as well.
> 
> But anyway, that animation deserves more love. <3
> 
> Finally, we have Sans quoting Nietzsche again, because, well, why not? They're two of my favorite nihilists, after all. ;)


End file.
